Innovative, more sustainable, and above all more efficient solutions for waste management in the Czech capital - these are the main objectives of the Comprehensive Waste Management Tool project, which won first place in the ninth annual Municipal Project of the Year 2023 competition. The award in the "Waste Management" category was received by Jana Komrsková, Deputy Mayor for Environment and Climate Plan. The project is jointly implemented by the Prague municipal company OICT and the Department of Environmental Protection of the Prague City Hall.
"The award is undoubtedly the result of the quality and effective cooperation between our teams from the environment and climate plan implementation and ICT and innovation. I hope that in the future we will go even further and more inspiring projects will be created. The fact that I am accepting the waste management award for a project within the Smart Prague 2030 concept proves that waste management is not an afterthought. On the contrary, it is one of the priorities. For example, thanks to this particular project, waste does not have to be collected as often. This not only has positive economic benefits for the city, but also saves fuel and thus also fulfils our climate plan," says Jana Komrsková, Deputy Minister for the Environment and Climate Plan.
Three in one: what is the project about?
The Comprehensive Waste Management Tool project is based on the Smart Prague 2030 concept, which has defined the "Waste-Free City" as one of its priorities. This unique project represents an innovative and efficient solution in the field of waste management and consists of three separate projects. The first is "Smart Waste Collection", which uses sensors placed in waste bins to monitor their fullness. The second project is "RFID waste bins", which uses chips to detect waste bin collections. The third project is the "Moje Praha" application, which serves to inform the citizens of the capital city about the current state of filling of individual waste bins and containers.
"The award-winning smart solutions and innovations have an additional impact besides making waste collection more efficient and reducing costs. They reduce the burden on the environment, increase the comfort on the roads, collect data for further use to optimise public space and also help to improve the awareness of Prague residents. Two things only seemingly disparate, i.e. garbage and innovation, have come together here and proven themselves in an example of good practice," says Daniel Mazur, Councillor for ICT, Smart Cities, Science and Research.
Thanks to this comprehensive project, the capital can thus monitor the status and actual filling of the separate waste collection bins with the help of IoT sensors, which are mainly located in underground and bottom-dump bins.
"The project dealing with waste management in Prague was first tested in pilot mode and after its certification it was transferred to routine operation. During 2021-2022, we expanded the project to about 1,200 sensors. In the future, we plan to extend the sensor solutions to all bottom-dump collection bins in Prague, i.e. up to approximately 7,000 collection bins," adds Petr Suška, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of OICT, who is responsible for Smart City and innovation issues.
The data obtained from the project is sent to the official Prague city data platform Golemio and information on the current state of filling of the selected waste bins is then available to the public on waste.mojepraha.eu.
OICT is currently assisting the Czech metropolis technically and in the transition to Multi-Commodity Collection, providing a tool that makes it easier to check the relabelling of individual bins by taking photos.
About the Municipal Project of the Year competition
The Municipal Project of the Year competition has been running annually since 2014 and recognises the best projects implemented at local government level in the past year. This year's edition awarded projects in a total of ten competition categories (Social Project of the Year, Public Health and Sport for All, Shaping Public Space, Public Greenery, Waste Management, Smart Municipality, Cultural and Educational Activities, Municipal and Community Energy, Ecological Project of the Year and Safe Municipal Authority) and also awarded the Minister of Regional Development Award.
The announcement of this year's competition took place on October 24, 2023 in the New Town Hall of the Prague 12 Municipal District.
